A brief history of ski touring

Ski touring and telemark skiing is not something that is new. It was in fact developed by communities long before industry weighed in with ski lifts. The origins of skiing can be traced back almost 5000 years, to rock drawings in Norway.

The modern forms of skiing are widely credited to Sondre Norheim of Telemark, Norway (from where telemark skiing gets its name). During the 1830, 40s and 50s he was instrumental in developing the equipment and techniques which have been adopted into the various forms of skiing we see today.

Ski touring and ski mountaineering quickly spread to the US and Europe. Starting in 1855, 'Snowshoe' Thomson used ski touring techniques to deliver mail in the Sierra Nevada. The first ski tour in the Alps was a ski tour from Frauenkirch to Arosa in 1894, undertaken by the Branger brothers and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (better known for Sherlock Holmes novels)! He wrote about the trip in the now iconic article, Crossing an Alpine Pass on Ski. The first true alpine ski traverse in Europe was Wilhelm Paulke's 1897 crossing of the Bernese Oberland in Switzerland, which is now widely hailed as the birth of ski mountaineering as we now know it.  It wasn't until 1911 that the famous Haute Route from Chamonix to Zermatt was put together. The first ski descent of Mont Blanc was a French-American duo in 1951, an important moment for ski touring and mountaineering. Mt McKinley was first descended by skis in 1970.

Whilst new extremes and first descents are being registered all the time, there is now a fast growing community of more 'leisurely' ski tourers, as more and more people decide that there is a muchbetter way to get up the mountain than using the lifts.  For those of us who love to tour  there is nothing more satisfying than to take the time to choose a route, check it for security, delve into the snow histories, get kitted up, pack a couple of bananas, and head up, nothing on our minds other than the feast of an empty powder field ahead.

If you are interested in a more detailed chronology of ski touring and mountaineering, check out wildsnow.com.